Karen L. Hackett,
FACHE, CAE,
calls herself “an
unlikely candidate to work
in hospitals,”
considering she
spent much of
her childhood in
waiting rooms.

“I grew up with a brother who has
cerebral palsy, so I spent a lot of time
sitting in doctor’s offices,” says Hackett,
CEO of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. “While I saw the good
work that they did, I wasn’t very fond of
doctors, because as a kid, that’s not a
very pleasant experience.”

Still, hospitals are where Hackett got
her start, working her way through college in hospital administration as both
an undergraduate and a graduate student. “Hospitals offered me a lot of good
opportunities,” she says. “I ended up
really enjoying the work; it just got into
my blood.”

When she eventually moved to Chicago from Florida, Hackett decided to
move from the front lines of health care
to the background. “When I moved to
Chicago, one of the jobs I interviewed
for was an association,” she says. “I
thought I was taking a risk by going to
work for an association, but I found it
was a very good fit for me. I loved working with members and found I was able
to draw on my background working with
hospitals and doctors to help me in the
various association jobs I’ve had.”

Among those jobs were stints at the
Metropolitan Chicago Healthcare Council, where she was vice president from
1989 until 1995, and the American College of Healthcare Executives, where she
was executive vice president and chief

operating officer from 1995 until 2003.

In 2003, Hackett joined AAOS in
her current post as CEO, where her work
over the past six years has earned her
the Association Forum of Chicagoland’s
2009 Samuel B. Shapiro Award for CEO
Excellence — the Forum’s highest honor
— which will be presented to Hackett at
the 2009 Forum Honors Gala on June
25 at Navy Pier.

“Receiving the Samuel B. Shapiro
Award from my peers at the Association Forum is an incredible honor,” says
Hackett, an ASAE Fellow who’s also
served as an ASAE committee chair and
board member. “Having the opportunity
to advance orthopaedics, to serve other
associations and medical specialty organizations, and to share my experience with
my colleagues is so meaningful to me.”

During her tenure as CEO, Hackett
has helped AAOS achieve six consecutive years of positive operating results.
Under her leadership, the association
also has initiated a board-supported
employee incentive compensation
plan, implemented a new governance
structure, commenced publishing a
new member magazine and produced a
series of award-winning public service
announcements promoting on behalf
of its membership the benefits of good
bone health.

Hackett says her real achievement,
however, isn’t a policy or a program.
Instead, it’s people. “I think my role as
the CEO is to facilitate and make the
best of the partnership we have between
our volunteer leaders and our very talented staff,” she says. “This award isn’t
really mine. It belongs to the wonderful
people who I work with every day to get
things done.”

Indeed, Hackett sees her job as aleader as collaborating rather than con-

trolling. “The academy is a large and
complex organization, so trying to micro-manage it would be impossible,” she
says. “My goal is to see the big picture
and facilitate it. I can’t do everything
myself; my job is to get all the pieces
together so that we can deliver the best
possible outcome.”

Teamwork always has been important
to Hackett. In fact, she credits her success in association management to an
entire team of mentors from whom she’s
learned during the course of her 20-year
association career. “I’ve been very fortunate to have worked with and for many
very talented association executives,”
she says. “One in particular that stands
out is Tom Dolan, who is president and
CEO of the American College of Health-care Executives. Being mentored by him
really helped prepare me for my job as
CEO at the academy.”

Hackett plans to use the Shapiro
Award to build even more of the professional relationships that brought her to
this point. “This award is a nice
reminder to me of the importance of
mentoring and helping other association
colleagues,” she says. “It’s a nice
reminder that you don’t stand alone;
you’re in it with other people, and everything you can do to help others inside
your organization and in the general
association management field makes
associations stronger, and I think that’s
a very good thing for this country.”

The Samuel B. Shapiro Award for CEO Excellence,
named in honor of a past Forum board chairman, is
presented annually to an association chief executive
officer for outstanding service and accomplishment
in association management. The award is presented
each year at the Forum Honors Gala. For information about this year’s Gala, visit www.association-week.org.